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Trump at NATO: “Germany Is a Captive of Russia”
President Donald Trump, in a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, blasted Germany for making a pipeline deal with Russia for energy, saying, “we’re going to have to do something because we’re not going to put up with it. We can’t put up with it. And it’s inappropriate. So, we have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that being paid to the country that we’re supposed to be protecting you against.”
Published in General
Nah, brah. You’re Johnny Caspar. Or Giovanni Gasparo. Whatever floats your boat. You want the odds going your way.
Trump is right on two things: 1) most countries in NATO are freeriding and should be called out for the strength of the alliance 2) Energy security=national security and European countries should strive for energy independence. Gas for Norway and North Sea and restart those Nukes!
The Russians want the Nord Stream 2 so they can bypass Ukraine where Nord Stream 1 transits. Russia will use energy as a weapon.
@asquared It’s not clear to me that your post is relevant? Do you believe that if Russia were delivering its resources via LNG barges that Pres Trump would not be criticizing Germany for buying from that source instead?
Cause I am pretty sure he would be. If he needed it explained to him I am pretty sure someone like Bolton would explain it to him nicely.
A few years ago, I attended the Connections conference which is the Militaries formal convention on professional war-gaming. The head of Germans war gaming unit was there and his description of his superiors was not a good sign. When asked during one of the panels a question that all the other visiting nations answered truthfully, his response. “If I suggested that to my superiors, they would reach for their pistols in one hand and the phone for the other, to call the men in whit suits to take them me to the mental hospital.” Come to think of it that was his answer any time he was asked a question by his superiors.
The question was whether or not they ever let Red Force ‘win’ in a training exercise. Red force being the ‘bad guys’ and the Blue force was the ‘good guys’.
Basically, the German Military is run by political officers who care more about kissing butt of their political masters than fighting a real war and they might look very pretty but military wise they are garbage.
Here’s a list of German fatalities in Afghanistan. Look at the areas where they fought. They basically sat in Kabul the entire deployment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Armed_Forces_casualties_in_Afghanistan
Well, the idea at least was to defend the world and the West not just America. I seriously doubt they spent more on “our” causes. Certainly not in blood. But these things are impossible to quantify exactly.
Mid you want to go back into history Germany loses big time, as throughout the Cold War we bore almost 100% in the 60’s and 70’s and the lion’s share thereafter.
Mans NATO members had already pledged to spend 2% of their GDP, and Germany’s been skating for years!
And what is NATOs primary goal again? Good point. I thought it was to protect Europe against Russia, but there’s always mission creep. Supposedly it’s good for Putin for it to be weak. I don’t know who to believe anymore. I know this: Germany and others need to pay their fair share of the deal because it’s coming out of our pockets, and I’m sick of paying through the nose.
It’s difficult for me to figure out exactly what his point is here. He spent the G7 critiquing then for kicking Russia out and now he spends NATO critiquing them for doing business with Russia. It’s a rather odd set of circumstances, unless his overall point is to just annoy the Germans.
So you’re saying that reading the Franco Fact File™ isn’t sufficient?
Trust no one! Raw footage only first, then you can listen/ read analysis!
Who’s winning?
There’s a big unspoken point to the pipeline that I haven’t seen mentioned here yet (although maybe I missed it in a comment).
The real reason for building pipelines directly from Russia to Germany is to allow Russia to screw over former Warsaw Pact ecountries.
Germany is by far the biggest customer of Russia’s Europe-bound gas, but all of the original pipelines are routed through – and also supply – the eastern European countries in between. Throughout the 2000s there were a number of spats between these countries and Russia, and Russia often tried to exert leverage by turning off the tap. But since those same pipelines also supplied Germany, such provocations often had the side effect of ticking off their largest customer.
Having an independent, direct pipeline to Germany means that Putin can literally turn off the lights in one of his former colonies as he pleases with almost no negative consequences.
It was actually huge news when it happened, in part because of the timing.
Gerhard Schröder went from a left-wing hero (for giving GWB the finger over Iraq) to a left-wing pariah in less than one year: first he championed major clawbacks to generous worker protections and welfare benefits, then he beclowned himself by claiming he won the subsequent Bundestag election (which was clearly won by Merkel), then he immediately jumped into bed with the Nord Stream pipeline.
That rapid fall from grace was big news, and he got raked over the coals in the media and society for the pipeline deal. Our local radio station had a vicious parody of the old German pop song “Ich Gib Gas”, sung in the voice of Schröder, that they played every day for months.
Lack of public awareness isn’t the problem. The problem is Germany’s effete inability to take any meaningful stand against any sort of malfeasance anywhere in Europe, even when that malfeasance hurts countries it’s pledged to protect and benefits its former adversary.
And it doesn’t help that Russia went on a major charm offensive at the time, as illustrated by the newest “Blue Fire by Gazprom” roller coaster at Germany’s biggest amusement park:
(Most of the 1-hour waiting line for the ride snakes through 10,000 square feet of Gazprom propaganda in the shiny building on the right)
Franco, I am so glad you posted this clip.
Like @sweezle, it gave me such a shot of pure joy and excitement to hear the president sit down to breakfast with the leaders of NATO and tell them quite clearly that they are not living up to their commitments. I absolutely love love love it.
God bless President Trump. I simply love watching him on the world stage. Such delight. So much winning.
He makes me so proud to be an American, and to be a New Yorker. God I love him and his delicious, atrocious Queens-ese.
Franco, I just realized your clip does not include the president’s remarks before the secretary general starts speaking. The White House’s video is sharper and includes those remarks:
NATO was originally designed to counteract a Soviet Union whose political philosophy was intent on world domination through revolution and military might. The Soviet Union does not exist anymore and while I agree with Mitt Romney that Russia, the biggest nation to come out of the Soviet Union, is a serious threat, it simply isn’t the type of military threat that motivated NATO’s creation.
I would argue that NATO has evolved into something like what the UN Security Council was intended to be, a coalition of powerful democracies capable of using military force to ensure peace and stability around the world.
As I said above, I’m all for ensuring NATO memebers living up to their treaty obligations, but buying natual gas from Russia does not violate either the letter or the spirit of NATO.
My point was, Germany is going to buy natural gas for its energy needs whether there was a pipeline conveniently delivering natural gas from Russia or not, and Russia would still get the same money if it sold its natural gas in other markets.
This is why I said that Trump doesn’t appear to understand how energy markets work.
With regard to “buying natural gas from Russia”, that’s not exactly the issue. It is this direct pipeline from Russia to Germany, which “bypasses” the Eastern European states in between. Senator Tom Cotton explains the problem:
And as with regard to the spirit of NATO itself, President Trump says that he would not have allowed the Russian encroachment on Crimea.
That is not what Trump said. He said, to paraphrase, why are we spending all this money defending you from Russia when you are giving Russia billions of dollars for natual gas?
Thanks. Do you happen to have a list of all the American servicemen killed or wounded in the last fifteen years defending Germany from Russia?
I think this is a great point. The NATO treaty says that all member countries have to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence. It doesn’t say that all member countries have to spend at least 2% of their GDP on the defence of Europe.
The USA spends about 7% of GDP on defence, but how much of that goes towards defending Europe, as opposed to defending North America, Japan, South Korea, etc.?
Should the money spent on the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq count towards the USA’s NATO obligation?
a) It wasn’t “encroachment”. It was annexation.
b) How would he have stopped it?
The EU (Germany) created the crisis in Ukraine with the help of American State Department personnel. The Russian response to the EU-inspired putsch and a reorientation of Ukraine was to invade Crimea and to launch a civil war in areas where Russian speakers were in the majority. This caused sanctions and all the other BS about election stealing. The EU and American reaction has been sanctions against Russia and continued denunciation of Russia. Yet Germany’s hypocritical stance is to both condemn, want others to have sanctions, and at the same time bring to fruition the pipeline. That Trump is annoying Germany is not the intention, but is the result by pointing out Germany’s hypocrisy.
Details. Details. ;-) At this point in time, we know that the words were simply “posturing”. It’s the ‘art of the deal’ in the dance with Putin. I do believe that he is putting Putin on notice that there is a new sheriff in town who is no where near as “flexible” as Obama.
Russia has a valid causus belt because the US and EU supported pro western candidates in an allegedly free democracy? And the fact that Luton basically owned the opposition party?
Im confused, is it good for the US to pursue its interests or not?
My favorite part of all of this is Gen Kelly’s pained reaction which according to the White House is because he didn’t get a proper breakfast. Because Marines are known for their pettiness and gluttony.
Since the advent of electrical power generation and (home/factory) delivery, energy is the lifeblood of an economy. Germany has “gone green” by slashing its coal and nuclear power generation (which is environmentally irrational when it comes to nuclear) and, instead, relies yugely on Russian gas. Once again, President Trump is right (and blunt) that this makes Germany vulnerable to economic/political manipulation. Or, in his words, it is held “captive” to the Russians.
I’m with Little Mama. President Trump is a joy to watch in action on the world stage. He speaks the truth in blunt and forceful terms, and he’s looking out for our interests. He’s right that it is “unfair” to American taxpayers to foot the bill for European security while they’re making deals with the devil. We’re fed up.
President Trump speaks for me.
Let’s be honest, he doesn’t give a flying fig if Germany buys gas from Russia. He simply wants Germany to pony up on its NATO spending, and he thinks this was a useful talking point towards that goal.
Indeed, as long as the UN makes no distinction between democratic countries and countries that are, um, shall we say, somewhat less so, it means that something like NATO will continue to be required to provide the world with an alternative to the feckless UN.
My graduate specialty was fusion when I was in grad school. I wrote a short essay in which I spoke of the “fusion constant”.
The fusion constant is 30 years, and is defined as the time from the present to when we have a commercial fusion reactor. I showed (way back then) the fusion constant had itself remained constant for the previous twenty years, and I suspect it is still 30 years today.
Okay, I was being snarky then, and I am now. Fusion is the energy of the future, but we have drastically underestimated the technological advances needed to bring it into our homes. Plus, when we do start building them, we’ll run into the usual anti-nuclear roadblocks . . .
OTOH, another area of research which could also have a huge impact is room temperature superconductivity. Most people are unaware of the line losses is the electrical distribution grid. In the US, there are estimates in the 5-7% range:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
This is probably because we tend to build power plants all over the place, so as to minimize line losses by shortening the distance from the reactor core to your Cuisinart. Other countries, particularly third world, can have more significant losses.
Back to room temperature superconductivity. If we could transmit power with little or no line losses, we could not only move new power plants away from densely populated areas, but for existing plants, the jump in efficiency at the source should help reduce costs to the consumer, who pay for these lines losses in their monthly bills.
Forget fusion. Invest in making thorium commercially viable.
Yes, yes, I know that there are still technical obstacles to thorium. Still, the amount of time, smarts, and money required to make thorium commercially viable is way less than the amount of time, smarts, and money required for fusion.
Well, not holding my breath on this one, either. One of the factors that has turned up in the study of superconductivity is that for any given such material, there’s an inverse relationship between operating temperature and the effect’s magnetic field strength limit. The higher the current, the higher the magnetic field, and the colder the material must be kept. This is the biggest limiter of the usefulness of superconductors in high-power devices, as evidenced by all of the misery suffered by supercollider engineers.
What’s worse is the conductor failure mode at high current levels — induction keeps the current flowing in the suddenly not superconductive material and the conductor itself violently disintegrates. The fine-grained, closely spaced temperature monitoring needed to trip the current before a temperature control failure becomes a catastrophic failure is prohibitive.
Yep. Time for the Europeans to get over their post-WWI/II teenage angst and grow up (man-up). Knock off the adolescent (environmental, impotent, multicultural) moral preening and become adults.